The present invention relates generally to the field of power electronic devices, and particularly to a hardware architecture for motor control drives to provide interfaces for communication and control of motors and processes.
A wide variety of applications exist for power electronic devices, such as switching devices and systems. In such systems, multiple components may be combined and interconnected for a wide range of functionality. For example, in traditional switchgear applications, such as motor drives, an enclosure is generally provided into which power is routed, along with network signals, sensor inputs, actuator outputs, and so forth. Components within the enclosure are interconnected with external circuitry, and can be interconnected with one another to provide for control, monitoring, circuit protection, and a multitude of other functions. Such conventional approaches, however, require a substantial number of terminations of various conductors, routing of conductors, mounting of various components, and so forth.
In other types of packaging, components may be associated with one another in mounting areas or bays, which are electrically coupled to buses for routing power to the various components. Examples of this type of packaging may be found in conventional motor control drives, in which various control, monitoring and protective circuits are mounted and interconnected with one another via wiring harnesses, cables, and so forth. In other applications, particularly where power levels are much lower, it has become conventional to provide a “backplane” to which components may be coupled, such as via plug-in connections. Such backplanes are currently in use throughout industrial applications, as for providing data and control signals to and from programmable logic controllers, computer components and peripherals, and so forth. The use of such backplanes, through which data and control signals can be easily routed, presents substantial advantages from the point of view of ease of assembly, replacement, servicing and expansion of overall systems incorporating a large number of interfaced components.
However, for backplanes using multiple components receiving any number of signals, the routing and timing of such signals to the motor control drive may present hardware and software challenges. The signaling must operate in such a way so that each signal reaches the main processing unit of the motor control drive and may be processed quickly enough to ensure a timely response. Additionally, where synchronization of multiple motors is required, synchronization of the signals of multiple motors and sensors also presents additional challenges.